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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28076676">Super Bad Girls</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/brownbot5k/pseuds/brownbot5k'>brownbot5k</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Age Difference, Casual Sex, Competence Kink, Consensual Sex, Drunk Sex, F/F, Minions, Orgasm Denial, Sexual Frustration, Size Difference, Sloppy Makeouts, Supervillains</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:15:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,067</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28076676</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/brownbot5k/pseuds/brownbot5k</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After escaping the family cult, Jackie remakes herself as supervillainous contract labor, where she meets a fellow thug-for-hire who's just as competent and sexually frustrated as she is.  Regrets are for good guys.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Original Female Character/Original Female Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Super Bad Girls</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Henchwench for Hire<br/>Summary: Jackie flees the cult she grew up in, becomes a punch-clock super-minion, and meets a fellow henchman who needs to get laid as badly as she does.</p><p> </p><p>Jackie flees the New Jersey Jactus Family with nothing but the clothes on her back and a hairline fracture in her arm, so she does what any self-respecting Disavowed would do: camo-morphs her injured ass into a piece of luggage, smuggles herself onto a Greyhound bus to New York City, and holes up to lick her wounds and raise some cash as supervillainous contract labor.</p><p>It’s there that she learns about Billings.</p><p>“She’s some super-strong elephant tank they’ve hired to keep us from taking what’s ours,” the boss explains to Jackie. “Keep her busy, huh?”</p><p>Men are snickering behind Jackie’s back, but she keeps her face blank. Once she has this paycheck, she never has to see these people or this city again.</p><p>“I’ll handle her,” she says.</p><p>More snickers, and the boss gives her a greasy smile. “See you Wednesday.”</p><p>It’s a small job, and brick-morphs fight like third-graders, but with those snickers and a bad arm, Jackie’s taking no chances. She has no reputation to rest on, no Family to avenge her, and she likes living. So, wearing throwaway civilian faces, she scopes out the territory: a tiny back alley, too cramped for cars, obstructed at one end by a Dumpster and foreclosed buildings to either side, one business, one residential. The business has been reclaimed, but the apartments’ fire escapes hold nothing but abandoned plants. Promising.</p><p>Come job day, Jackie stations herself on a fire escape, crouched in a large flowerpot and disguised as a dead shrub. (That’ll fall apart the moment she really moves, but oh well.) She wraps herself in her Jactus robe, sucks down protein shakes, listens to her social skills podcast (“How To Human: Consent 101”), and periodically fluxes her muscles so they don’t stiffen up. It’s boring, but at least it’s easy on her arm.</p><p>Finally, things start happening. A truck parks in front of the alley. Jackie’s employers show up. A door in the side of the retail building opens. Out come the wares—whatever they are—on a forklift. With it come the opponents—all male, except for…</p><p>Ah. That must be Billings. She towers over the others, a slab of muscle in a three piece suit. No visible weapons; at her size, she’d need custom-made, and bricks are notoriously hard on their stuff. White, pushing thirty, shaved head and eyebrows, placid cow eyes.</p><p>She’s also wicked hot, but that’s none of Jackie’s business.</p><p>Slow and careful, Jackie reaches for her sleeve, but before she makes it, her boss very obviously looks up at her and shouts, “Quit loitering and stop Billings!”</p><p>There goes her camo.</p><p>Billings’s head snaps up, belying the sleepy look. “Hiya, gorgeous!”</p><p>She reaches up, grabs the fire escape, and shakes it like a towel. The metal ripples like water, but Jackie’s already static-clung her robe close and leaped to the opposite wall, tossing down the first weapon she can grab—a blade.</p><p>She doesn’t expect it to work, and it doesn’t; Billings bats it out of the air (at a trajectory so it doesn’t fly into her teammates) and clambers on top of the Dumpster to try and reach her. “Aw, honey, don’t be like that! Let’s talk, you and me.”</p><p>Jackie’s job isn’t to drop Billings, just distract her, so she uses her bad arm to rain down short-range smoke and glitter and irritants, anything to impede and annoy, leaping from wall to wall to stay out of range of those huge hands. Even injured, she’s faster, and a quick adjustment of her morph roughens the soles of her gloves and shoes to better grip windowsills and crooked bricks that would never bear Billings’s weight.</p><p>One of them can’t bear Jackie either. It comes off in her hand, leaving her slither-sliding down the wall… where Billings catches her, surprisingly gently.</p><p>She pins Jackie’s arms to her sides. “I haven’t seen you before; you new?”</p><p>Jackie twists, but Billings is granite, enough making her bad arm throb despite the morph job holding it together. Jackie’s legs are still free though, so she wraps them around Billings’s throat. It feels like trying to choke a log.</p><p>“You clearly know what you’re doing.” Billings’s voice doesn’t sound the least bit strained. “What’re you doing working for these clowns?”</p><p>Jackie resists a growl of frustration. Bricks are the worst. She hardens her soft tissues, tightens her grip, and Billings just lets her.</p><p>“Wow, I almost feel that!” Billings laughs. “You’re stronger than you look. And flexible!”</p><p>Jackie has been trained to say as little as possible (banter is for ubermenschen) but Billing’s cheerful equanimity is maddening; she tries to shake Billings with her legs and snarls, “Go down.”</p><p>Billings’s eyebrows go up, and her eyes go down. “But I haven’t bought you a drink yet.”</p><p>Jackie is saved from response by screams on both sides: “Ubermenschen!”</p><p>The cheer on Billings’s face vanishes; her head snaps up, same as Jackie’s, just in time to see a caped figure above and a smoking canister arcing down.</p><p>Billings drops Jackie to dive on it but doesn’t make it; the canister hits with a bang, engulfing Billings in a cloud of tear gas. Jackie’s already press-sealing her cowl over her face and leaping to the warped fire escape… where she sees the flowerpot from her earlier disguise. She grabs it.</p><p>“Billings! Catch!”</p><p>Billings turns in her direction, but probably can’t see anything, so Jackie lobs the flowerpot at her chest. When it hits, Billings manages to grab it and clap it over the tear gas canister, containing the spray. Displeased, the ubermensch above throws down a smoke bomb. It’s not as bad as the tear gas, but it adds to the mayhem, and the way the alley is built keeps it from dispersing.</p><p>This is the situation nobody wants; any conflict between Jackie and Billings’s employers is forgotten. People are fleeing the alley, but the call was “ubermenschen.” If one is on the roof, others must be waiting at either end of the alley, and Jackie has a bad arm. She drops into the smoke and dives into the Dumpster, planning to disguise herself as a bag of garbage— an appropriate end to a bad job.</p><p>Billings is worse off. A woman her size can’t easily hide. Jackie hears her lumbering by, hacking and coughing, and before she can think, Jackie jumps up, grabs her arm, and hisses, “in here.”</p><p>Billings doesn’t say a word, just climbs in.</p><p>The Dumpster is big, but so is Billings. Jackie finds herself squished between the wall of the bin (sticky, slimy, and crusty) and Billings herself—and being a brick-morph, she’s hard. At least the Dumpster’s shape has kept out most of the smoke, and Jackie’s robe protects her from the tear gas powder smeared all over Billings.</p><p>“This won’t work,” Billings wheezes. She’s covered in snot, saliva, and tears but her breathing is already clearing. “They’ll check—”</p><p>Jackie claps a hand over Billings’s mouth before someone hears, squeezes around Billings’s bulk, and shoves her (well, encourages her) back and down onto her hands and knees. Jackie’s never had to camo-morph around an outsider before, and this will require all her skills.</p><p>Jackie adjusts her body temperature and skin conductivity—less for herself than to signal her Jactus robe. When it takes on the sheen of dark trashbag plastic, she uncharges to billow it out and drapes the extra material over Billings. What she can’t cover, she piles garbage around. It’s disgusting, but Billings helps, and Jackie has just enough time to move fat deposits around and contort herself around Billings to make their silhouettes better resemble lumpy trash before a loudspeaker blares, “this is the Militiamen, please halt!”</p><p>They freeze.</p><p>Huddled in the dark of the Dumpster, draped in garbage, her back to the opening, Jackie can’t see a thing or move to fix that. She keeps her hand over Billings’s mouth, ignores the snot and saliva, slows and quiets her own breathing, counts breaths. In, out. The sounds of chaos ebb and flow around them. Her bad arm throbs; her back aches. No amount of muscle flux can make this position comfortable, hunched and bowed to mimic the shape of garbage, with Billings’s breasts in her face, but Jackie holds the freeze.</p><p>The noise fades. Footsteps approach. Billings tenses.</p><p>Silence. In, out.</p><p>“All clear!” The steps move on.</p><p>Billings is clearly a professional; she holds the freeze until all steps leave and the alley is left silent for five minutes. Then they breathe sighs of relief and Jackie lets the masquerade fall. She straightens, moves her body fat back to comfortable positions, charges her skin to bring her robe back close to her, and pulls her hand away from Billings’s mouth, which is surprisingly soft for a brick’s.</p><p>“Not that I’m complaining,” Billings rasps, helping her out of the Dumpster, “I appreciate the save, but why?”</p><p>She looks awful, covered in garbage and tear gas powder, with red, streaming nose and eyes, and Jackie is positive she looks no better. She’s sore, hungry, and probably not getting paid, so she stretches and replies, “You treated me best. And I want that drink you offered.”</p><p>Billings looks up, apparently startled, then covers it with a cornball smile and says, “She speaks! Sure, new girl, we can—”</p><p>Jackie’s stomach roars. Billings’s eyebrows go up.</p><p>“Dinner on me?”</p><p>To hell with Family sangfroid. If Billings wants to buy her dinner and flirt, let her. “Please.”</p><p>Billings looks at her expectantly. When Jackie stares back blankly, Billings asks, “Who am I buying dinner for, sweetheart?”</p><p>Jackie has names for work, names for civilians, and her mind blanks on all of them. Frantic, mortified, she blurts out the secret one, the one she calls herself: “Jackie.”</p><p>If Billings notices her consternation, it doesn’t show. “Nice to meet you, Jack. I’d shake your hand, but mine are covered in tear gas.”</p><p>Jackie’s wearing gloves, but Billings isn’t. “Does it hurt?”</p><p>“Burns a bit. Might have a rash tomorrow.” Billings looks down at their stained clothes, too disgusting for even New Yorkers not to notice. “Not to be forward, but your place or mine?”</p><p>Billings’s—Jackie doesn’t give out her (temporary) address to anybody, and her across-town hostel room has little soap and no laundry. Billings’s apartment has both, it’s within walking distance, and as the crowning enticement, she offers Jackie the first shower.</p><p>“You don’t have durability. And I could wash your back for you.”</p><p>Billings hasn’t even seen Jackie outside of her all-encompassing Jactus robe yet, but she’s still offering. The thought warms—for a moment. Then it reminds Jackie of the last time she had a girl to wash her back, which makes her stop wanting to think.</p><p>So she says, “dinner first,” and Billings makes a “can’t blame a girl for trying” shrug and takes her home.</p><p>It proves to be a parahuman place, judging by the scaly man checking his mail. When he sees them, stinking and bedraggled, he laughs, “Working hard, Billings?” and has to be dissuaded from fist-bumping her. Since Billings is covered in tear gas powder from head to foot, she hands her keys to Jackie and asks her to hold and open all the doors.</p><p>“Mike’s a good super but he’s made of tissue,” she says. “I don’t want to get this stuff on him.”</p><p>None of the common areas they pass through are built on Billings’s scale. The door to her apartment shows signs of having been broken at least once, and the knob has a big chunk of wood tied around it—easier for Billings to grip and turn. Jackie doesn’t get a good look at the basement apartment; she’s too busy bee-lining for the bathroom, which turns out to be dim, industrial, and mammoth, a whole tile room with a drain in the floor and a showerhead in the ceiling. Before her Disavowal, Jackie might’ve sneered at it, but the hostel room has humbled her; she relishes the plentiful hot water and soap. And the fluffy towels are gigantic.</p><p>Well, they’d have to be, wouldn’t they?</p><p>As the water pours over her body, she checks the set-morph on her bad arm. She’s not a healer-morph (they don’t live long, what with the cancer and autoimmune issues) but hardening and tightening her soft tissues into an inner cast seems to have held her arm steady—and now that she can afford to, she stiffens up her hand and fingers so she won’t accidentally, involuntarily move in a way that makes things worse. She’ll be sore in the morning, but that’s okay.</p><p>Jackie scrubs her robe as best she can with what’s at hand, but while the tear gas rinses off, the stain and stink of garbage remains. At least the civilian clothes in the inner pockets are okay, sealed in Ziploc bags. They’re purposely bland, T-shirt and cut-offs bought secondhand. Jackie pulls them on, automatically adjusts her waistline and hips to make them fit right, and after a moment of thought, shifts her morph to a throwaway guise. She’s not on the clock, but Billings is conspicuously parahuman; better to wear a face she never will again.</p><p>When she comes out, clean and dressed, she finds Billings stripped down to A-frame and jockey shorts, shoving her suit into the wash with a look of distaste.</p><p>“That’s machine-washable?” Jackie asks.</p><p>Billings glances up. “Has to be. Ubermenschen check the dry cleaners; it’s how they got Smooth Criminal a while back. Yours?”</p><p>Jackie nods, and when Billings holds out her hand, she hands the robe over. In neutral, it’s a billowy mass of charcoal fabric, all one piece, with heavier, thicker material at the ends: cowl, gloves, shoes. In its default state, it feels like polyester.</p><p>Billings gets to work pre-treating the stains with a brick of laundry soap and an attitude of long familiarity, while Jackie tries not to pay attention too obviously. Until arriving in this city, she never had to do her own laundry… plus she likes watching the muscles working in Billings’s arms. Even out of the suit, she looks sleek. No scars, which is to be expected, but no body hair or peach fuzz either. Odd, she doesn’t know any brick-morph Families that go the hairless route…</p><p>Billings tosses Jackie’s clothes into the wash, pours in detergent and fabric softener, reaches for her A-frame… and glances over her shoulder. “You mind?”</p><p>It takes a moment to understand. “Oh, sorry.” Jackie turns her back.</p><p>She hears Billings bark her knuckles on the ceiling, the soft flumph of clothes getting tossed into the washer, the tick-tick-tick-phwoar of the cycle starting, footsteps, and finally, the click of the bathroom door. When the shower starts up again, Jackie relaxes and looks around.</p><p>The apartment is nicer than Jackie’s hostel room but nothing compared to the Family compound. The ceilings are just high enough for Billings to stand up straight in, and judging by the cushions and futon on the floor, she’s given up on conventional furniture. What little there is looks old and well-used, built to her scale—a bookshelf, a rocking chair. The books are all hardbacks, and look as though they’ve seen better days. How-to books, mostly: home repair, cooking, accounting. No doors, asides from the bathroom, and the suits in the closet seem to be the nicest things in the place.</p><p>Then again, seeing New York rent and the temporary nature of life as a henchwench for hire, maybe Billings is playing it smart, funneling her budget into her clothes. At least they’re easy to carry. (Jackie still remembers how troublesome it was to replace her Family gear, never mind move it. And she’ll have to move it again, out of the state, next time she gets paid. She’s not looking forward to it.)</p><p>It feels weird, just standing there in someone else’s apartment. Jackie calls over the sound of water, “Need help washing your back?”</p><p>Billings chuckles. “You could never reach.”</p><p>So much for flirting.</p><p>Jackie fidgets, then goes and finds a wash cloth and soaks it in the sink. While she’s here, she might as well clean up any tear gas residue they left coming in.</p><p>When she finishes, she returns to find Billings fresh out of the shower, clean and rolling up her shirt sleeves.</p><p>“There you are! What—” she realizes. “Aw, honey, you didn’t have to do that.”</p><p>Jackie shrugs uncomfortably and tosses the washcloth in the wash. “I felt weird in your apartment.”</p><p>She looks jealously at Billings. She looks fine, in both attractive and healthy meanings; there’s no way to know she was point-blank teargassed.</p><p>“You brick-morphs are the worst,” Jackie grumbles.</p><p>Billings starts to look smug, but then cocks her head. “Morph? I’m not a morph. Do I look like an Al-Omega goon?”</p><p>Al-Omegas get all the press of the morph Families, because they’re insane and mostly fight naked. It’s true that Billings doesn’t fit the image, but then again, Jackie doesn’t fit the image of the Jactus Family; she spent her first day in the hostel ripping out all the Family marks and restitching her robe herself. Without thinking about it, she presumed Billings a fellow Disavowed, or maybe a freak accident of static birth. It does happen.</p><p>“But you smell like a—” Jackie bites her tongue.</p><p>Billings’s eyebrows go up. She crosses her arms—not accusingly, but awaiting an answer.</p><p>That is not something she’s supposed to discuss with statics, but Jackie doesn’t know how to explain herself, so she flails, “You don’t… you don’t smell bad… you just…smell like a morph.” An attractive, available one. “So I thought…”</p><p>“There’s a smell?” Then Billings’s eyes light up and she snaps her fingers. “That’s how y’all know each other in the field!”</p><p>Jackie nods.</p><p>“Huh. Always wondered how you did that. Nobody’s mentioned it to me before, though.”</p><p>“They wouldn’t have.” Only another morph would notice, and none would’ve said so. But Billings is looking at her so inquiringly, she grits, “It’s… impolite.”</p><p>“Really.” Is Billings laughing at her?</p><p>“You don’t do that. I’m sorry.”</p><p>Billings is laughing at her. “Well, I’ll be damned. You learn something new every day.”</p><p>“It’s not funny!”</p><p>“Here I always thought you morphs were just close-mouthed, but no, it turns out y’all’re smelling me this whole damned time!” Billings leers at her, showing crooked teeth. “What do I smell like?”</p><p>Jackie marinades in embarrassment. “It’s impolite,” she repeats, and reaches for Billings’s hand. At the last minute, remembering her social skills podcast, she asks, “May I?”</p><p>“Sure.” Billings holds out her hand.</p><p>Jackie gives it a squeeze, but there’s no give. The soft tissues are harder than her own, giving Billings that distinct brick feeling, even though they’re no longer fighting. Jackie feels the pads of the fingers and palm, the webs in between, moves up Billings’s arm and under her sleeve, but it’s all the same.</p><p>Billings clears her throat and Jackie realizes she’s getting overly familiar.  She hastily pulls away.</p><p>“You can’t soften?”</p><p>Billings shoves her hands in her pockets. “No. I told you, I’m not a morph. I can’t… change.”</p><p>“That sounds inconvenient.”</p><p>“Mm, yeah.” Billings looks uncomfortable. “So, you’re a morph? But you’re wearing clothes.”</p><p>“I’m not Al-Omega,” Jackie says, insulted. “They’re embarrassments with a malapropos wolf fetish. I’m—” what is she now? She settles on, “I’m just Jackie. Jack.”</p><p>Billings accepts it. “Where to, Jack?”</p><p>“You pick; you know the area.”</p><p>The place Billings chooses is a smoky unter bar where her size warrants no comment and the waitress knows her by name. A boxy jukebox in the corner plays sleazy music. They take a corner booth, the only kind big enough for Billings, and order beers: bottles for Jackie, pitchers for Billings.</p><p>“How did you know I was new in town?” Jackie asks as the waitress departs.</p><p>Billings shrugs. “You were too good for those guys. They’re clowns. They can’t get good labor because of it, so I figured the only way they bagged you was you were too new to know. Let me guess, they didn’t pay you in advance?”</p><p>“I didn’t have the reputation to get it,” Jackie admits.</p><p>They have to pause because the beers arrive, along with an extra-large plastic basket of tortilla chips so greasy that the wax paper is transparent under them, plus guacamole and queso. After sending the waitress off with their orders, Jackie shotguns her first two beers and pounces on the chips; after the day’s work, she needs calories, quickly, and the greasy food and cheap beer deliver deliciously.</p><p>“That’s bullshit,” Billings continue as she eats. “In this business, everyone pays at least half up-front with ubermenschen hazards, and the Militiamen are always creeping around this part of town. They didn’t warn you about that either, I’ll bet.”</p><p>“No,” Jackie says. “But I did my research beforehand. I know them and the White Dawn patrol the area.”</p><p>“See? You’re way too good for those guys. You clearly need a work reference, a leg up. Everybody knows me, and nobody shorts me.” She cracks her knuckles, steals a chip with exaggerated delicacy so as not to crumble it. “So if you like, tomorrow we’ll pay your guys a visit, make sure nobody shorts you either.”</p><p>Jackie swallows her chips, washes them down with more beer. She doesn’t need her social skills podcast to know that asking is rude, but at the same time… “Why?”</p><p>Billings looks her over, drinks her beer, then shrugs and says, “I always flirt with the girls. They don’t flirt back. You don’t owe me anything; just helping out a fellow henchdyke.”</p><p>There’s a hint of question in the term, but Jackie is too caught in her emotions and trying to hide them to react right away. Henchdyke. Like there’s a word for what she is, like she belongs. Like she’s part of something with Billings.</p><p>It makes her afraid. But it also makes her feel like crying, in a good way.</p><p>“I’m bi,” Jackie says.</p><p>Billings shrugs. “You can be a bi dyke if you like,” she says, tone casual.</p><p>Jackie thinks it over, thinks about what she’s seen of Billings. The Family are assholes, but they taught her to observe and read people’s intentions, not just their image. Billings dresses fancy but knows how to pre-treat laundry, fix her own plumbing, and balance her own books, which along with the crooked teeth suggest a less illustrious start. Her accent tries to be New York, but she still fronts her vowels—and apparently says y’all when caught by surprise. During the fight, she took pains to prevent collateral damage among her teammates and avoid hurting Jackie by accident, even in motions and actions that were reflexive, not planned. She showed concern for her building super. And she seems clueless about morph Family politics, unaware any Families exist outside of Al-Omega.</p><p>“What brought you up north?” Jackie asks.</p><p>Billings blinks. “No work. I grew up in a real small town.”</p><p>“No ubermenschen?”</p><p>Billings snorts. “Honey, even if there were, they couldn’t pay me enough to join. Uberfrauen have to do the whole overcompensation thing—the long hair, the heels, the Spandex. And if you’re a dyke you have to be… you know, perfect. Always a spokesman. I don’t have it in me, never did. I’ve always been a bad dyke.”</p><p>“Problematic,” Jackie corrects, despite herself. “These days, they say problematic.”</p><p>“Problem dyke, that’s me. Besides, I grew up in a redneck family; if I started working for the super-cops, they’d disown me!”</p><p>Jackie makes a stab in the dark. “Where are they? South Carolina?”</p><p>“Texas. You?”</p><p>Jackie prepares to bolt the bar. “Jersey.”</p><p>There’s only one morph Family in Jersey, but Billings shows no sign of recognition, just says, “Say you’re from Delaware or something instead.”</p><p>Jackie almost laughs with relief. Billings doesn’t know. Billings doesn’t care. She really is just a big problem dyke wanting in her pants. “You’re right. Yeah.”</p><p>Billings doesn’t even seem to notice her relief, just continues with, “Here, I get to wear whatever I want, say whatever I want.” She puts on a jocular smile and spreads her hands. “And it got me a pretty girl’s legs around my neck, so who am I to complain?”</p><p>The alcohol sweeps over Jackie in a warm flood. She relaxes into it. Henchdyke. She likes the sound of that. “Flirting with me during a fight? Classy.”</p><p>Billings snorts. “Oh, honey, I could’ve been so much worse. You’re lucky I didn’t say the first thing I thought when I saw you in that garden get-up.”</p><p>Jackie chugs her beer and looks attentive.</p><p>Billings leers at her. “Nice bush.”</p><p>Jackie makes a face and swats at Billings, who cackles like a rock slide. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to sleep with you anymore.”</p><p>“Aw, baby, don’t be like that! I can change!” Billings laughs when she says it, and Jackie laughs with her. It feels so good to laugh with someone, really laugh, not just perform.</p><p>This feels good. When was the last time Jackie felt good?</p><p>She doesn’t want to think about that, not when she feels warm and contented and optimistic for the future, even if no further than an hour. Instead, she claps a hand to Billings’s back and says, “You’re the best, Billings.”</p><p>“I know, baby, I know. Just wait till you have me.”</p><p>Jackie brushes her hand over Billings’s shoulders. “Should’ve let me wash your back.”</p><p>The muscles under Jackie’s hand tense, just a little. It passes in a moment, but it’s enough.</p><p>“You’re shy?” Jackie asks.</p><p>“No,” Billings says, too quickly. “I like my body just fine, thank you.”</p><p>Jackie makes sure not to react to that.</p><p>“You don’t take people home,” Billings continues, taking a pull from the pitcher, “I don’t get naked. Nothing personal, Jack.”</p><p>Before she can stop herself, Jackie says, “Is sex off the table?”</p><p>“Oh no, honey, sex is absolutely on the table, as long as you’re willing to work with that.” There’s a question behind the words.</p><p>The buzz is settling in, all warm relief and relaxation, so Jackie shrugs and says, “Just as well.”</p><p>Billings raises an eyebrow.</p><p>“What do you know about Al-Omegas and sex?” Jackie asks.</p><p>“Uh… they have some weird thing about alpha males, pop out lots of kids, and they can’t work ten minutes without making eyes at each other. Also orgies.”</p><p>Jackie snorts. “Okay, all of that isn’t real—I mean, they act like it is, but it’s not. Except the kids; they’re against birth control.” She’s getting off-track. “The point is, you smell good, Billings.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“I mean, really good.” Jackie is positive she’s doing this poorly, but for once, she doesn’t care. The worst that’ll happen is she talks herself out of sex, which she can live with. “And for morph reasons—”</p><p>“Morph reasons?”</p><p>“I can do this with you, just as long as you don’t get me off, don’t get undressed, and… and keep me frustrated, okay? I really don’t want to have to explain more than that.”</p><p>Billings looks at her thoughtfully, pulls from her beer. “That,” she says, “sounds way more inconvenient than what I’ve got.”</p><p>“That’s my rule,” Jackie says. “It’s better that way. Okay?”</p><p>In Jersey, this would’ve been unthinkable. Fucking a target to complete a mission is one thing, but to enjoy relations with outsiders, to do it for pleasure, with a static no less… if Jackie weren’t already Disavowed, she’d be quaking, and part of her still is. But at the same time, it’s a relief to just say it straightforwardly, because judging by Billings’s look, she doesn’t understand any of this. She doesn’t know or care what workers or nymphs or queens are. She just thinks Jackie has some hang-ups.</p><p>“Frustrated, huh?” Billings says, her voice a whiskey-smooth rumble. She brushes her fingertips down Jackie’s bare shoulder.</p><p>It’s the first time Billings has touched her, outside of fighting. It feels good. And Jackie’s not in Jersey anymore; she doesn’t have to care about her future, her standing, the Family, any of that. Just this.</p><p>So she leans in, slides her arm around Billings’s neck, and puts one leg over her thigh so Billings will put her hand on it. “Yeah.” And she’s close enough now to breathe it into Billings’s soft, unfairly pretty mouth, “Frustrate me.”</p><p>Which is how Jackie ends up in the women’s restroom with Billings’s hands up her shirt and her tongue in Billings’s mouth.</p><p>Billings is a good kisser. A bit rough-textured and too-solid, but her mouth is soft and warm and her bulk is comforting, and her scent is morph-like enough to be delicious, not so much as to be terrifying. But Jackie is short and Billings way too tall to be comfortable bending like this, even if she is a brick, so Jackie uses her grip on Billings’s neck to swing up her lower body and wrap her legs high around Billings’s waist.</p><p>Billings makes a startled but grateful noise, straightens, and shoves her up against the graffiti-ed wall, using her hips to keep Jackie in place. She pulls back far enough to say, “I feel that.”</p><p>Jackie laughs and unbuttons Billings’s shirt to grope her. “Frustrate me,” she demands, and bites Billings’s lip.</p><p>Billings obeys. It’s sloppy and drunk and perfect, and when they finally part ways, Jackie is warm with beer and wet with lust all the way home. (And when she finally does get off, that night in her crappy hostel bed, it feels wonderful.)</p><p>The next morning, there’s no call, no retaliation, no punishment. She just meets up with Billings to pick up her laundered work clothes and pay a visit to her dirtbag employer. Billings is loose in the hips, sleepy-eyed, and clearly pleased with herself, and between the two of them, they have no trouble getting Jackie paid.</p><p>She’s out on a bus to DC that very day. When she unpacks her clothes at the next place, a hotel room of her very own, she finds Billings’s number in a pocket of her Jactus robe, scribbled with the words, “For no-strings whatever, whenever.”</p><p>It makes Jackie smile.</p>
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